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Time is really of the essence in
in Sales and in Marketing. Move at the wrong
speed is to open up the possibility that its
easier for your buyer to deal with your competitor than with you.
Force the speed in the wrong way
and you'll absolutely make that conversation between your competitor
and your buyer a certainty.
Today I want to talk with you about lag, delay,
the effect of lag and the effect of
trying to change how long its takes buyer to move between stages.
I'm going to give you a couple examples,
they're kind of counter examples. The first one is
the effective delay. Drawn from a
real story we worked with a company and we measured
the time it took for them to win a deal. We found that
it took 51 days to win a deal. That same company
we measured their funnel - how long it took to lose a deal
and it took on average 151 days
three time longer. The lesson
from that is that a buyer who's
really taking longer to move between one stage and
the next in their journey is probably never going to move
forward. They've either moved forward with your competitor
and not yet shared it with you, or perhaps
they're just never going to go ahead with that project, it's not compelling enough.
or maybe your sales people are kidding themselves.
Maybe the prospect is just telling them all the right things but the
sales person doesn't want to give in. And whilst that's a great
trait, its really hard to build business around it. Imagine
in that 51 day journey, if it
took on average 10 days to move between each of five stages.
So, slice your funnel up into five stages
and give them 10 days each. Now for buyers
been sitting at any one of those stages for 30 days
and a normal buyer who does buy takes 10. What do you think
the chances are that they're ever going to move ahead? I'm thinking not much.
Lag is death.
Now here's the other story.
Likewise we're measuring funnel top to bottom but
I only want to talk about the very middle of the funnel and in this example,
this case study, it took 16
days for a buyer to navigate the middle of the funnel.
Not the top not the bottom, just the middle of the funnel so that
might be the need definition stage maybe even including the opportunity creation
stage. So need definition and solution if you like.
and that middle stage took 16 days
on average for a successful buyer. So how long do you think it'll take
for a buyer who didn't move forward? Well based on my other example you might think
45 - 50 in other words, three times longer.
The answer if four. When they took four days to
navigate the middle band, they lost when they took 16,
they won. Why? Because the seller
was rushing the buyer. The seller was failing to say to the buyer
"with respect, I hear what you're saying
but lets just explore that a bit to make sure I understand it
and to see if there's some value that I can add to the need definition stage as well."
When they slowed down they won, when they sped up they lost.
let's just explore what the benefits
would be if we could help buyers move more quickly through the funnel.
The answer's,
nothing. If you can help buyers
move through the funnel faster, that's not moving through the funnel more
certainly. All that's going to happen if they can move faster
is that you can buy your lists or acquire your inbound leads
a little later. That's all that's going to change.
So if there's no benefit to moving them faster
and you've found that if you try to rush
you're going to lose then why would you? There is an exception to that.
So as a general rule I am going to say don't try and speed up
the buying cycle. It takes as long as it takes.
There's one exception. We call these Lag Busters
and there are sometimes either a tactic or strategic shift that you can make
that genuinely allows the buyer to move faster. Here's one quick example:
So imagine that you are a brand new vendor with a brand new piece of technology
in an established market. For your buyers that's
a double-dare. You're asking them to buy you
and you new idea - your new technology
without the proof yet They're going to take time.
So, if you genuinely know that your product is going to work and they
don't, it takes them time to reach your level of knowledge.
How about removing that? Removing that requirement for them to acquire
your level of knowledge and say to the
customer, I know that right now we're a little
unproven to you but I know it works and I have done it often enough.
So, here's the deal: I'm going to take all the commercial risk
instead of paying me to buy the technology, I'm going to give it to you on a month-by-month
basis with no contract. Now I know in
some businesses you simply can't to that it is kind of hard in professional services
to take that kind of risk. this is a product story for now
but basically if you can the de-risk the deal
you are going to speed it up naturally. Not by rushing the buyer
by giving them a lesser decision to make.
Other than that the basic rule is - you just can't make the funnel go any
faster. Well in a moment or two I will show you how we do that
in the funnel plan. But first I am going to do two things. I'm going to
share with you the conclusions from today and I am going to invite you
to receive more of these blogs. But, lets get to that conclusion first.
To a significant extent the conclusion is just to
acknowledge the reality of how long it takes a buyer to move
that's it. How do you know that though? Well for a start you should me measuring
every one opportunity and every lost opportunity and
you should be contrasting it campaign by campaign,
geography by geography, sales group
by sales group or sales person by sales person if you're at that level of regularity
and work out how long a deal naturally takes to move
through the funnel. Identify whether you're actually
impacting that. Remember my Lag Busters story where I was
explaining that the vendor in that story was actually
causing or forcing the prospect to slow right down because
they had this kind of two-part risk. So,
work out whether you're actually the reason why it's changed. Other than that
just acknowledge how long it takes by measuring that
from your CRM. Once
you've measured the CRM then project forward
to get this many deals in Q4, how many deals need to be in proposal stage or earlier in
Q3 and so on
back through the funnel. Finally you need
to choose tactics good enough
to help buyers move confidently through their journey at that
rate. Well if you've enjoyed this blog
then likely you'll enjoy our other blogs. They're all about how to
help buyers move through your funnel. So
if you haven't already I'm going to invite you to go to
mathmarketing.com/blog and to subscribe either
to the twice a week blog or
to the once a month insights from
Funnel Vision Monthly. Now if you have already done that but you've got
colleagues that have can I encourage you or ask you
to invite them to go to mathmarketing.com/blog
and to subscribe. So I promised I was going to show you how we do this in
the funnel plan. Firstly, lag doesn't
present itself on the funnel plan directly, it has a consequence on the
velocity model.
Lets take a look at the velocity model
basically, the velocity model describes how many
close deals teammate major attack its
and therefore proposals this files
between proposals how many definitions
hammy travel buyers have any interest but
types all the way through lack impact
its consequence works present
its tech we just left
we can do it two levels of granularity
you can stick with very high level pictures like how long tactic
from from qualified lead through too close to you
that's what we're talking about earlier work how long it takes any
its work with or conduct
here into the more detailed 6 of the velocity model
weekend break stage by stage
frankly what most people do stop the big number
portion more granular to make sure
reflect rustic
now quickly evidence my point for about
fact that if you try to act by coach fast
happens take a look here couple numbers for you
firstly if you have
see week
a few change that site
ten-week our show you to
lost numbers so firstly its
generate the velocity
identified sweeney half the very top
file to yes else it's a the week have 4600 fall
prospects in order to get just short
exiles if we shorten that cycle
it's printed 10 weeks lets loose three weeks
title take a look the numbers now 456
really at all is barges
cell cycle stride cell cycle three weeks
you can have 35
fueled by less than one percent
given see pitfalls spike earlier
and almost negligible impact
XL right successfully why would you bother
just work hello actually takes occupies get through the final
at that stage leakage
different story altogether of
rights sites by stage itself sweet
she had to do that another block for now
before always